Smokeball

What it is

Smokeball is practice management software for small law firms, built around two things most competitors treat as add-ons: automatic time capture and document automation inside Microsoft Word and Outlook. It covers matters, contacts, calendaring, billing, trust accounting, a client portal, e-signature and e-filing, with practice-area templates and form libraries on its upper tiers. Its customers are mostly firms of 2 to 30 people, and its strongest fit is Word-heavy work: family law, estates, real estate, general practice. Founded in 2012, it runs from Chicago, Sydney and London and sits alongside sister companies InfoTrack (court e-filing) and LawY (AI legal research).

Its AI is Archie, a matter assistant that reads the matter record: client details, documents, tasks, calendar, billing, trust balances and file notes. The release Smokeball shipped on 2026-05-12 replaced single-pass retrieval with multi-step agentic reasoning and put Archie in a Word sidebar and a new-Outlook add-in, where it attaches to the right matter automatically. Firms can pick OpenAI, Anthropic or Google models; per LawSites, GPT-5.2 is the default and a growing share of users switch to Claude. The vendor reports 20,000+ daily active users and prompt volume up 241% since January 2026.

Why it shows up in Legal Ops stacks

• Time gets captured without timers. AutoTime logs work on documents, emails and calls against the matter, so an hourly firm stops losing the six-minute entries nobody writes down. It is included in Prosper+ and sold as an add-on on Grow.
• The AI works where lawyers already type. Archie drafts and answers inside Word and Outlook with matter context attached, instead of asking lawyers to copy text into a browser tab.
• Research comes from a partner, not a rebuild. A Thomson Reuters partnership announced 2026-03-25 connects Smokeball to CoCounsel Legal, starting with a connector that pushes matter documents to CoCounsel in bulk. Smokeball says it does not send personally identifiable matter data to LawY or Thomson Reuters.

Pricing reality

smokeball.com/pricing, checked 2026-09-30, publishes no numbers. It lists four plans:

• Bill — invoicing, time and expense tracking, online payments, trust accounting, accounting integrations.
• Boost — adds browser-based matter, task and calendar management, Microsoft 365 integration, client portal, e-signature and e-filing.
• Grow — adds the native desktop app, practice-area templates, advanced document automation and email management; aimed at firms with three or more staff.
• Prosper+ — adds AutoTime, lead management, intake, custom workflows and profitability reporting.

Archie is an add-on on every plan, Prosper+ included. Price depends on headcount (1-2, 3-9 or 10+ users) and a 12- or 36-month term; there is no self-serve trial and no month-to-month option. Capterra’s vendor feed still lists Bill at $49 and Boost at $89 per user per month; several 2026 reviewers report a $149 monthly floor. Budget planning: expect Grow and Prosper+ to sit above Boost’s $89 per user before Archie and AutoTime (estimate), which puts a five-lawyer firm on Prosper+ well past $5,340 a year. Get the quote in writing, per seat, for both term lengths.

Best for

• Managing partners and firm administrators at hourly-billing firms of 2-30 people that draft in Word and live in Outlook: family, estates, real estate, general practice.
• Firms losing revenue to unrecorded time, where AutoTime pays for the upgrade.
• Not for in-house legal teams, high-volume plaintiff firms, or firms that want to compare published prices before talking to sales.

Versus the alternatives

• vs Clio. The market-share leader. After buying vLex it owns legal research and drafting inside the matter; it publishes only its entry tier at $49 per user per month. Pick Clio when research is central or the firm is heading past 30 lawyers; pick Smokeball when time capture and Word automation drive the value.
• vs MyCase. The second name in most shortlists, and the price-transparent one: $50, $100 and $130 per user per month billed annually, with a 10-day trial. Pick MyCase for consumer-facing, intake-heavy practices and a readable budget; pick Smokeball for document-heavy work.
• vs Filevine. The fastest-growing platform in the category, with $400M raised at an estimated $3B valuation in September 2025. It is built for plaintiff firms running templated, high-volume case work. At that scale Smokeball is the wrong shape.
• vs PracticePanther. Published prices from $49 per user per month with accounting bundled at the top tier. Pick it when price certainty outweighs AI and automatic time capture.

Watch-outs

• The best parts are the most expensive parts. AutoTime needs Grow plus an add-on or Prosper+, and Archie costs extra on every plan. Guard: ask for the quote with Archie and AutoTime priced as separate lines, so you can see what the AI adds per seat.
• Long contracts, no trial. Terms run 12 or 36 months. Guard: run a scripted demo on one of your own matters, get a written 36-month price cap, and negotiate an exit clause for the first 90 days.
• Windows-first desktop app. The full desktop client is Windows; Mac users rely on the browser app or virtualization. Guard: inventory every lawyer’s machine before choosing Grow.
• No official MCP server. Smokeball has a REST API with OAuth 2.0, issued through its partner program, but its only MCP server is an open-source community project. Guard: treat it as unsupported and keep it away from privileged matters until Smokeball ships its own.